Site Offline

[Disruption]

Good afternoon,
I have been working in emails for support and haven’t heard back in a few days so I wanted to post here. The last status from the staff stated management needed to be involved and it was escalated. Since January 31st I’ve been offline after changing nameservers to IPS’s servers. 
 

Are there any updates from management on this? It’s hard to be left in the dark for so long when you’re trying to build a site and a monthly customer. 

Edited February 4, 2022 by Agent Shark

[Jim M]

Sorry, your ticket is still awaiting reviewal from a manager to move forward. I apologize for the inconvenience. 

[Disruption]

8 hours ago, Jim M said:

Sorry, your ticket is still awaiting reviewal from a manager to move forward. I apologize for the inconvenience. 

Just wish there was more transparency. I appreciate you responding here but its hard to be left in the dark on a cloud package that should be easier for both you and I.

[Jim M]

Unfortunately, as mentioned in your ticket, you are experiencing an issue with your domain which is requiring investigation from a manager. As this issue is completely unique and escalations of this kind can take some time, I do not have an ETA for you or any further information at this time.

I completely understand any and all frustration, we certainly would prefer this not to happen and are frustrated as well but we will work through it. You brought a few concerns up in your ticket and if you have any further, I encourage you to post them there as the manager will address them when they reply back to you next. Once again, I apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.

[Disruption]

On 2/5/2022 at 9:46 AM, Jim M said:

Unfortunately, as mentioned in your ticket, you are experiencing an issue with your domain which is requiring investigation from a manager. As this issue is completely unique and escalations of this kind can take some time, I do not have an ETA for you or any further information at this time.

I completely understand any and all frustration, we certainly would prefer this not to happen and are frustrated as well but we will work through it. You brought a few concerns up in your ticket and if you have any further, I encourage you to post them there as the manager will address them when they reply back to you next. Once again, I apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.

While I understand that we’re going to work through the issue the matter still stands: management hasn’t looked at it. I spent over $100 in one sitting just getting all the plugins I felt I needed from your marketplace and I am currently just sitting on my thumbs waiting for support to look at it. An offline site should take priority especially when it comes to being a site you are responsible for hosting.

I’m lost how I’m a week offline and that doesn’t seem like something relatively urgent. Especially considering you all are receiving a monthly subscription from me which includes support. I’m tagging the only management I know to this thread. This is not normal.

 

@Matt

[Pescao6]

DNS changes can take anywhere between 5 minutes to 72 hours to propagate.
Normally when you contact any web hosting support they always tell you to wait 24-48 hours.

But essentially, all you're waiting for is for the A record to update with the new name servers.
Your A record is what points your domain to your web host.

You can check on the current status of your name servers and A record on https://dnschecker.org
And it might also help to Flush the Google DNS Cache for your A record.

Note that if it propagated already but your site is not loading you, most likely you just need to clear your web browser's cookies and cache files. And if you can also change your PC's DNS to Google DNS or CloudFlare DNS because sometimes your ISP's DNS is just bad.

If you're trying to setup something like a custom name server, that can take a while to propagate.
I tried it, and it was taking so long for new name servers to get validated that I just gave up and switched it back.

But a good way to hide your name servers is to have something like CloudFlare or StackPath manage your DNS. And that should be fairly quick probably anywhere between 5 minutes to 6 hours you'll be up and running assuming of course you put in the correct A record. And you know CloudFlare is free, but they're support isn't great. I've been using StackPath for little over a year and their live chat support has always amazing.

Out of curiosity, if you don't mind sharing what domain registrar and web host are you using?

[Disruption]

1 hour ago, Pescao6 said:

DNS changes can take anywhere between 5 minutes to 72 hours to propagate.
Normally when you contact any web hosting support they always tell you to wait 24-48 hours.

But essentially, all you're waiting for is for the A record to update with the new name servers.
Your A record is what points your domain to your web host.

You can check on the current status of your name servers and A record on https://dnschecker.org
And it might also help to Flush the Google DNS Cache for your A record.

Note that if it propagated already but your site is not loading you, most likely you just need to clear your web browser's cookies and cache files. And if you can also change your PC's DNS to Google DNS or CloudFlare DNS because sometimes your ISP's DNS is just bad.

If you're trying to setup something like a custom name server, that can take a while to propagate.
I tried it, and it was taking so long for new name servers to get validated that I just gave up and switched it back.

But a good way to hide your name servers is to have something like CloudFlare or StackPath manage your DNS. And that should be fairly quick probably anywhere between 5 minutes to 6 hours you'll be up and running assuming of course you put in the correct A record. And you know CloudFlare is free, but they're support isn't great. I've been using StackPath for little over a year and their live chat support has always amazing.

Out of curiosity, if you don't mind sharing what domain registrar and web host are you using?

Thanks for the information. The site is actually being hosted by Invision themselves via their cloud package. I've pointed their nameservers listed in their help guide located below. Staff indicated my issue is unique and required manager escalation. Its been a week now with no update other than its waiting manager attention. 

My domain registrar however is Namecheap though. 

 

[Pescao6]

11 minutes ago, Agent Shark said:

The site is actually being hosted by Invision themselves via their cloud package.

🤯Wow. And that's supposed to be "better" than self-hosting. Moments like this I'm glad I took the self-hosting route even though I went through some big learning curves.

47 minutes ago, Agent Shark said:

My domain registrar however is Namecheap though. 

😬It'd be funny if Namecheap was to blame and here we were trashing IPS support. Have you tried reaching out to Namecheap to see if they had any advice?

53 minutes ago, Agent Shark said:

Its been a week now with no update other than its waiting manager attention. 

🤔I currently have most of my domains on GoDaddy, I'm hosting on Hosting Supremo, and using StackPath for website security. I think I pay a bit more than I would at other places, but the support I get from these companies has been totally worth it. Escalations can take a while, but waiting a week for support is insane. 🤮

[Disruption]

1 hour ago, Pescao6 said:

🤯Wow. And that's supposed to be "better" than self-hosting. Moments like this I'm glad I took the self-hosting route even though I went through some big learning curves.

😬It'd be funny if Namecheap was to blame and here we were trashing IPS support. Have you tried reaching out to Namecheap to see if they had any advice?

🤔I currently have most of my domains on GoDaddy, I'm hosting on Hosting Supremo, and using StackPath for website security. I think I pay a bit more than I would at other places, but the support I get from these companies has been totally worth it. Escalations can take a while, but waiting a week for support is insane. 🤮

I’ve communicated with Namecheap support and I’ve provided the Nameservers from Invision and they confirm they were entered correctly. I wish it was Namecheap. I’d feel better about the situation in that case. I have a self hosted plan with another domain and honestly, this is pushing me to consider self hosting with this site. 
 

Problem is: I don’t want to spend 650 up front at the moment. I understood that escalations can take some time but a week for an offline site is insane. If I was actually able to use my monthly service while the domain was being investigated, I’d feel slightly better. I can’t even develop my vision for this site. 😅

[Pescao6]

35 minutes ago, Agent Shark said:

If I was actually able to use my monthly service while the domain was being investigated, I’d feel slightly better. I can’t even develop my vision for this site.

You could choose an Invision Community address or I'll decide later when selecting the domain option for your Managed IPS Hosting purchase. That should let you get started right away.

You can also experiment with a demo for 14 days: https://invisioncommunity.com/clientarea/demo/
The only problem with the demo is that it doesn't include all of the features so you'll find additional settings once you get up and running with the licensed one.

[Disruption]

12 minutes ago, Pescao6 said:

You could choose an Invision Community address or I'll decide later when selecting the domain option for your Managed IPS Hosting purchase. That should let you get started right away.

You can also experiment with a demo for 14 days: https://invisioncommunity.com/clientarea/demo/
The only problem with the demo is that it doesn't include all of the features so you'll find additional settings once you get up and running with the licensed one.

So I had an Invision domain but when I submitted a ticket to use my official domain, my Invision domain was removed and only my domain was an access point for me. The 14 day trial isn’t feasible for my needs as the content I had been working on involved marketplace plugins. 
 

I wish there was a backup access point for me but unfortunately, support said I’d be offline until my domain was deployed.

[Randy Calvert]

This sounds like a new(er) account?  Is it possible to just have support totally start you over?

[Disruption]

1 minute ago, Randy Calvert said:

This sounds like a new(er) account?  Is it possible to just have support totally start you over?

That’s what I was thinking. I have no idea how their backend hosting works but I can’t imagine it being hard to redeploy an instance they were hosting my site on. My fear is reconfiguring what I did so far. 
 

as for account age, first month in for this site. Wanted the support factor of Invision. That was the selling point.

[Marc]

5 hours ago, Agent Shark said:

That’s what I was thinking. I have no idea how their backend hosting works but I can’t imagine it being hard to redeploy an instance they were hosting my site on. My fear is reconfiguring what I did so far. 
 

as for account age, first month in for this site. Wanted the support factor of Invision. That was the selling point.

You wont have to reconfigure your site itself, don't worry. I'll see if we can get this expediated for you. Our apologies for the issue you are facing here. It seems there is a very unusual situation with your domain that I havent seen in the thousands I have applied personally, so its taking some time to go through. 

[Marc]

@Agent Shark You will be happy to know this has now been resolved for you. Once again, apologies for the time taken on this one.